Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#311

Post by jsmthrowaway » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 8:19 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #246

mullingitover wrote: post #170

I witnessed my girlfriend's Nexus 6p support experience with Google and it was not pretty. I would never buy a Google phone after that. The phone, just barely out of warranty, goes into a bootloop and becomes a paperweight. Google helpfully shrugs the problem off on Huawei, and Huawei will of course not support the product since it's out of warranty. There is no repair option. I tried Android early on, had similarly…

Disclaimer: I work at Google but have nothing to do with any hardware team. I bought a Nexus 6P from the Google store and had some issues. Out of warranty they replaced it with a new Nexus 6P. When that failed as well, they replaced the phone with a brand new Pixel XL. Each of these replacements was sent via overnight shipping at no cost to me. I wouldn't call this a great experience because I wish the original phone…

Did you identify yourself as a Google employee? Just asking because re: consistency, I could believe a blue badge might pull some weight in that situation. Speaking from experience, badging at an Apple Store will often change a conversation, sometimes dramatically, despite that ability not really being intended at all. Neither here nor there, just a data point.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#312

Post by lambda_lover » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 8:20 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #250

kpxxx3 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The audio quality drop is noticeable to me. I'm not going to get into an audiophile/golden ear flamewar, but I am always skeptical of this claim. Yes, SBC is not the world's best, but it supports bitrates upto 500 kbit/s. I'm not going to claim it is completely transparent, but 9 times out of 10 it is being used with shitty bluetooth headphones (where the alternative is shitty wired headphones)... at that point the…

The audio quality issue is not due to encoding. It's due to garbling and interference from, you know, the two feet from my pocket to my headphones while sitting at home in my apartment. This has happened in every apartment I've lived in since getting Bluetooth headphones. It happened in my parents' house with a quarter mile to any neighbors. It happens when walking down the street. It happens at the gym. It happens a…

I ride the subway in NYC every day, and this is especially bad on my commute. The interference is absolutely unacceptable, and has convinced me that bluetooth is not ready at all for my use case.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#313

Post by WrkInProgress » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 8:21 PM UTC

Akujin wrote: post #80

endorphone wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure, Samsung's desperate attempt to fork off users is annoying. From Bixby to their own little app store, to duplicate versions of all of the basics like the clock and the calculator. But overall my experience has been extremely positive. And it's only fair to note that what we know as the pure Android was Google essentially sweeping in all of the cool things from Samsung, HTC and others.

I don't agree with that assessment. I've been using Android since 1.0. The default experience is simply just that. No frills. No skins. Just Google apps. What exactly did they pull from HTC or Samsung that is now in the Gapps package? Android comes without Google apps as well. Gapps package installs Gmail, Maps, etc but not much in the way of frills.

I've used maybe 15 Android devices since it's inception. HTC, Samsung, Sony, Motorola, and "Google" (two Nexus devices and 1 Pixel).

If I had to choose I would take stock Android in terms of aesthetics, ten times out of ten.

However, over time Android has indeed taken MANY features from HTC, Motrola, Samsung and other OEMS and added them to vanilla android.

I know I'm forgetting a lot more but off the top of my head:

- multi-app support - always on displays - readibility - night mode - smart gestures - Stamina mode which is now Doze on stock Android - voice commands - even things like Google Now (minus the smart assistant) to the left of the home screen, were actually provided earlier by OEMs (as a method to differentiate) like HTC's blinkfeed - heck, the first stock Android devices, didn't even have smart dialers (HTC added that as part of their Sense dialer)

Samsung's Touchwiz looked terrible until the most recent incarnation (it's now called the Samsung Experience) and it did contain some bloat, namely with duplicate apps but it's always been much more feature packed than stock Android. Some of the features were not so great but a lot of them were and eventually Google copied them. You can say the same to a lesser extent for HTC, Sony and Motorola.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#314

Post by huehehue » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 8:22 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #170

I witnessed my girlfriend's Nexus 6p support experience with Google and it was not pretty. I would never buy a Google phone after that. The phone, just barely out of warranty, goes into a bootloop and becomes a paperweight. Google helpfully shrugs the problem off on Huawei, and Huawei will of course not support the product since it's out of warranty. There is no repair option. I tried Android early on, had similarly…

My girlfriend had the exact same experience with her Nexus 5x.

Fwiw there's a small open-source patch for affected devices that disables big cores (disables dual core I think) and fixes the bootloop but cripples the phone's performance.

Now, it looks like those issues are caused by the Snapdragon 808/810. The Pixel 2 uses the 835. I don't think it's been around long enough to know of any long-term issues, but I'm hoping it sucks less.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#315

Post by JohnBooty » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 8:22 PM UTC

craftyguy wrote: post #141

robterrell wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it not time yet? When I lost my Pixel on a trip, I switched to an iPhone 7 + airpods and it's been great. I don't want to go back to wired headphones. Apple certainly seems to have nailed it. I can't imagine Google + HTC can't too.

My biggest problem with this is that I do not want to have yet another device that requires batteries and/or charging in order for it to function. Wired headphones powered through the audio cable are simple, don't quit working if their battery drain, don't require charging, and you can find them anywhere if you need a replacement.

Yeah, I definitely have "charging fatigue."

I have... I don't even know. 20? 50? devices that need to be charged on a regular basis. I really don't want to charge anything besides my phone and my laptop. I don't want the ritual of taking 2 or 5 or 10 different things out of my bag at the end of the day, plugging them in, and then unplugging them and rewrapping the cables and putting them back into my bag. That is not "convenience" in my book.

There's also a small level of cognitive overhead involved with remembering which devices were charged when. We're not talking rocket science here but most of us are IMHO already in a constant state of distraction thanks to information overload, and I don't want more variables to think about.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#316

Post by euyyn » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 8:23 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #225

nataz wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this story a number of times, but it doesn't match at all with my experience. Did she buy it from google? I bought mine direct from google and the service was fantastic when I had an issue with my phone. I called them up, explained my problem, and 5 mins later they were sending me a replacement in the mail with a pre-stamped shipping package to send the old one back. I'm not sure what else I could ask for.

> Did she buy it from google? Why should that matter? My wife's iPhone was purchased from TMO. It had an issue so she took it into an Apple store and she came out with a new phone 10 minutes later.

> she took it into an Apple store

What the parent is saying is that's precisely the difference. Your wife brought her phone to the manufacturer.

The Nexus phones were not manufactured by Google. If I don't buy it from the Google store, my buying didn't establish a commercial relationship with them. The Pixel phones, though, are manufactured by Google.

Disclaimer: Even though I'm a Google employee I have no idea how these things work. I'm just clarifying what the parent said, which sounds likely to me.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#317

Post by hota_mazi » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 8:23 PM UTC

r0fl wrote: post #210

mullingitover wrote: post #170

I witnessed my girlfriend's Nexus 6p support experience with Google and it was not pretty. I would never buy a Google phone after that. The phone, just barely out of warranty, goes into a bootloop and becomes a paperweight. Google helpfully shrugs the problem off on Huawei, and Huawei will of course not support the product since it's out of warranty. There is no repair option. I tried Android early on, had similarly…

Stories like this are the reason I will never switch from Apple products. I have personally have had nothing but outstanding customer service from Apple and have heard countless examples of products being fixed or replaced for free even when out of warranty without any hassles. Switching to an Android phone to save $100-200 over the lifetime of a product that I use 1000 times per day, and risk bad customer service is…

> Stories like this are the reason I will never switch from Apple products.

Strong words. If Apple's support started getting worse, you'd switch.

What you're saying is that you like to stick with a company that has so far had an outstanding support track record.

Which is pretty self-evident.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#318

Post by kuschku » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 8:23 PM UTC

Akujin wrote: post #92

AcerbicZero wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used the 6P for a fair amount of time, but I think the Nexus 5 was still the high water mark for Nexus phones. Cheap, great hardware, durable, and perfectly sized. That said, I would have kept my 6P if I had known how disappointing the Pixel 1 was going to be. Double the price without any useful changes just feels like a rip off. No chance I'm going to throw more money at Google for another mediocre product.

This. So much this. I had the Nexus 5 as well. The 6P offers me: - Aluminum case. - 1080p screen - 4K video recording - Slow-motion video recording @ 1080p 240fps - 12.3MP single shot - A good enough CPU for lag free web browsing, spotify, snapchat, instagram, etc. Why the fuck would I pay $700+ for a new phone for marginal improvements???

Google just dropped support for the Nexus 5X and 6P, for unknown reasons. I hate it. Now I have no options left. (I need a device that will get android developer previews)

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#319

Post by kuschku » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 8:24 PM UTC

jamesrcole wrote: post #216

kuschku wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought headphones from Sennheiser with lifelong guarantee once, and I plan to use them until I die, just like my parents used their Sennheisers for decades. There’s many people exactly like that.

There might be many people like that, but given the cost of such headphones they'd have to be a small percentage of the overall population of phone/headphone users.

They don’t have to be super expensive – even 160€ headphones from sennheiser are awesome, and you can get replacement parts and repairs for decades.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#320

Post by hota_mazi » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 8:26 PM UTC

modzu wrote: post #244

lopespm wrote: post #45

Honest question: for those of you who own a mobile device without a headphone jack, do you find it to be an encuberment? Personally I still find it a bit hostile to not have the jack available, since often times I find myself charging the phone and using the headphones (when watching videos for example), so having an adapter dongle for such a frequent task seems counterintuitive to me. I believe that if a device is c…

you guys should try switching to a camera for your photography instead of a cellphone, then we can remove the camera from the phone too the idea that because bluetooth headphones exist means the jack shouldnt exist is not fair -- there are plenty of reasons the jack is plenty useful to plenty enough people the only excuse I can see to remove the jack is that when you sell a billion devices and the little jack costs a…

Exactly. I routinely switch my headset from my laptop to my phone and vice versa. Doing this with a jack is trivial. Doing this with a BlueTooth headset is very annoying and requires additional steps on both devices.